I just wrote a real long post about our local weather: road closures, power outages, way too many weekenders/New Year's celebrants, etc., with links to all kinds of shit for your amusement and edification. Maybe an hour's worth. As I was moving the cursor from the final 'period' towards 'publish', the power went off for the second time today. Lasted less than thirty seconds, but -poof!- the post was gone.

I think the weather gods were trying to tell me it was too long and nobody would care anyway. I can take a hint. I won't try to duplicate it. You're saved.

Howsomever, in the course of my research I discovered the absolute best webcam site I've yet seen. Go click around my state and my mountains. I'm going to. There's even a 'Shamu, The Killer Whale' one! Whee!

One of my new favorites, Matt Taibbi, who calls 'em like he sees 'em, on Bush's recent PR speeches on Iraq.

Bush in person always strikes me as the kind of guy who would ask a woman for a hand job at the end of a first date. He has days where he looks like she said yes, and days where the answer was no.

Today was one of his no days. He frowned, looking wronged, and grabbed the microphone. I pulled out my notebook . . .

A few minutes later, I felt like a hooker who's just blinked under a blanket with a prep-school virgin. Was that it? Is it over? It seemed to be; Bush was off the podium and slipping down the first line of the crowd, pumping hands for a minute and then promptly Snagglepussing toward the left exit. By the time I made it five rows into the crowd, he had vanished into a sea of Secret Servicemen, who whisked him away, presumably to return him posthaste to his formaldehyde tank.

In other words, this was really a National Strategy for Victory at Home. It was classic Bush-think: Instead of bombing the insurgency off the map, he bombs the map -- in lieu of actually fighting the war (my em), a bold strategy, to be sure. But would it work?

And on his encounter with Scott "That's my story an' I'm stickin' to it" McClellan in the WH press room:

"Just to be clear," I said, exasperated, "that's a different argument than was made to the American people before the war."

"Our arguments are very public," he said. "You can go look at what the arguments are. That's not what I was talking about."

He smiled at me. There's your strategy for victory in Iraq: Fuck all of you -- we're sticking to our story.

We all know that outside of blowing up some foreign swarthies the thing you loved most is money. If anything you obsess over your stock market earnings more than most. So I'd like you to pay attention to this particular statistic.

When "the Clenis" took office in January 1993, the stock market stood at about 3,500. When "the Clenis" left office in January 2001, the stock market was at 10,588.

In nearly five years, what has "Mr. Deficit" the Chimperor Disgustus accomplished for your market portfolio?

Yesterday, the market closed at 10,717.50. Five years into the Clinton presidency it stood at about 8,000 (more than double).

To what extent is it possible that today's Republican Party scandals are not just about traditional corruption, but instead are the result of manipulation by foreign interests, masquerading as corruption and ideological cultism? China, Iran, ??? The neo-cons are persuaded by ideology and cooked-up intelligence to go to war in Iraq. Iran ends up with Shia Iraq as a client state, with its oil resources at its disposal, for sale to China. America weakened, its industries no longer competitive, it's infrastructure crumbling. Who benefits?

Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff consulted briefly Friday with a federal judge in Miami as they put the finishing touches on a plea deal that could be announced as early as Tuesday, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

...

Abramoff's cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers and their staff members. [my ems]

The United States Coast Guard is a military, multimission, maritime service and one of the nation's five Armed Services. Its mission is to protect the public, the environment, and U.S. economic interest - in the nation's ports and waterways, along the coast, on international waters, or in any maritime region as required to support national security.

Lord help us if we didn't have 'em. I give them all a salute and will hoist a pint of Newcastle (maybe more than one) in their honor tonight. Think about what they do in a single day:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating who disclosed a secret domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, officials said on Friday.

"We are opening an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA," a Justice Department official said on condition of anonymity.

...

It takes a set to demand an investigation after the WH knew the Times had this story for a year, especially since they had no intention of investigating who leaked Valerie Plame's identity to the press. Why didn't they take the Times to task last year? Because it was, say it with me, election season. Let's hope Abramoff takes the lot of them down before the next one.

How will the Establishment deal with this direct challenge? The past few years give little grounds for hope: the Democrats spineless, conflicted, co-opted and corrupt; the Republicans slavish, bellicose, cruel and criminal; the media timorous, witless, corporate-controlled; big business absolutely rolling in gravy from the autocrat's larder; academia cowed, silenced, ignored, demonized; the military acquiescent in criminal aggression, top-heavy with time-servers currying autocratic favor. Only the courts provide some stray sparks of hope, although they too are now loaded with political sycophants, corporate bagmen and knuckle-dragging throwbacks produced by the Right's decades-long devolution of American jurisprudence. Prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald and Elliot Spitzer "keep hope alive," but their efforts will mean little in a system where lawlessness at the top has been countenanced by the rest of the Establishment. And in any case, the outcome of their work lies ultimately with the Supreme Court -- the same court that shredded the Constitution in awarding power to Bush in the first place, and which is now led by a Bushist apparatchik.

Still, you don't go through a constitutional crisis with the Establishment you want; you go through a constitutional crisis with the Establishment you have. And this sad, sick crew, ladies and gentlemen, is all we have. If they swallow the spy scandal, if they don't push back now -- and I mean really push back, not just make a lot of harrumphing noise or hold a few toothless hearings or get a couple of underlings offered up as ritual sacrifices to save the Leader -- then we will have well and truly and finally lost the Republic that Franklin, Jefferson and Madison gave us so long ago.

So much for tax and spend Liberals. Jane's coined a name for the Repubs. Why? This:

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said yesterday that the United States could be unable to pay its bills in early 2006 unless Congress raises the government's borrowing authority, which is now capped at $8.18 trillion.

...

"At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations," Snow wrote.

This is just plain un-fucking-believable: The U.S. has war plans drawn up to invade CANADA fer chrissake! I had to check my calendar to make sure it's not April 1st. It's not. It's all laid out in this surprisingly good (and funny!) article in the WaPo.

At that point, it's only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: "ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL."

It sounds like a joke but it's not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies. They can photocopy it for 15 cents a page.

Out in Winnipeg -- the Manitoba capital, whose rail yards were slated to be seized in the plan -- Brad Salyn, the city's director of communications, said he didn't think Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz knew anything about War Plan Red: "You know he would have no clue about what you're talking about, eh?"

"I'm sure Winnipeggers will stand up tall in defense of our country," Mayor Katz said later. "We have many, many weapons."

What kind of weapons?

"We have peashooters, slingshots and snowballs," he said, laughing.

But the Canadians' best weapon, Katz added, is their weather. "It gets to about minus-50 Celsius with a wind chill," he said. "It will be like Napoleon's invasion of Russia. I'm quite convinced that you'll meet your Waterloo on the banks of the Assiniboine River."

As it turns out, Katz isn't the first Canadian to speculate on how to fight the U.S.A. In fact, Canadian military strategists developed a plan to invade the United States in 1921 -- nine years before their American counterparts created War Plan Red.

Brown's idea was to buy time for the British to come to Canada's rescue. Buster even entered the United States in civilian clothing to do some reconnaissance.

"He had a total annual budget of $1,200," said Rudmin, "so he himself would drive to the areas where they were going to invade and take pictures and pick up free maps at gas stations."

Etzinger, the Canadian Embassy spokesman, isn't worried about an American invasion because Canada has a secret weapon -- actually thousands of secret weapons.

"We've got thousands of Canadians in the U.S. right now, in place secretly," he said. "They could be on your street. We've sent people like Celine Dion and Mike Myers to secretly infiltrate American society."

Pretty funny, Mr. Etzinger. But the strategists who wrote War Plan Red were prepared for that problem. They noted that "it would be necessary to deal internally" with the "large number" of Brits and Canadians living in the United States -- and also with "a small number of professional pacifists and communists."

The planners did not specify exactly what would be done with those undesirables. But it would be kinda fun to see Celine Dion and Mike Myers wearing orange jumpsuits down in Guantanamo.

Eh?

Don't miss this one.

It would have been nice if our war planners had been as thorough in planning for Iraq. Maybe they were. OK then, it would have been nice if higher-higher had listened to them.

If we screw up invading Canada as bad as we did Iraq, and we easily could under this misadministration, we would truly deserve to be the world's laughingstock as much or even more than we deserve their scorn now, eh?

A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest. (What an awful thought! - G)

A year ago, we didn't know for sure that almost all the politicians and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president isn't above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

Read and enjoy. While you're there, thank Kevin for saving you $49.95.

Apology: I bit on a bad story in my Dec. 20 column. The tale of the UMass-Dartmouth student who was visited by the feds for checking out Mao's "Little Red Book" has turned out to be a hoax. So sorry.

Thank you, Molly. This is the first retraction, let alone apology, that I've seen on this.

It was an awfully easy hoax to believe, as is anything involving intrusion or calculated erosion of civil liberties by this administration.

To its perpetrators I say: shame on you, both for lying and for being lazy. There's enough real government assaults on our freedom that you don't have to make them up.

We should be used to hoaxes. We have had many, many of them pulled on us by this administration. If any of them admit it, let alone apologize, on their deathbeds, I'd be very surprised, but I'm certainly willing to let a whole bunch of 'em die to test my theory.

1. No free speech. Criticizing a Republican is illegal. Criticizing any Republican policy is illegal. You so-called 'moderate' Repubs take heed. The word 'bipartisanship' will be stricken from the language. All communications will be monitored for anti-Republican activity. Hey, if you're not doing anything wrong, you got nothing to hide, right?

2. No pornography. Sorry, guys, use your imagination. Ooops...I forgot, masturbation is frowned upon too. Think of all those potential fetuses you're shooting into that Kleenex.

3. No birth control, no abortions. Unwanted pregnancy? Sorry, shouldn't have had sex in the first place unless you're married. The fact that you're pregnant is a gift from God (except in the situation described in #5, in which your soul and the souls of your progeny will be banished to the Fires of Hell).

4. No sex before marriage. You Jesuslanders abstain until marriage, right? So this shouldn't be too hard for ya.

5. No sex (marriage) between races. I mean, if we keep that up, the average American will be brown and swarthy in 50 years. Note to Jesuslanders: If your lily white daughter gets knocked up by Mandingo who plays middle linebacker on the high school football team, see #3.

6. Homosexuality. Illegal, punishable by death. Move to France if you wanna do that shit. There will be camps to straighten out those of you who want to stay.

7. State religion. Everyone (no exceptions) will accept the God of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as their one true God. Eh? What's that, you Jewish folks? Get real. We don't need you anymore and you can go to Israel if you want to do that Old Testament shit, or you can remain and be treated like Muslims. Muslims, the last of you should be in the appropriate camp by the end of the week. Anybody else? Just get the fuck out, or convert, or you'll end up like the Muslims too.

8. Education. Each school district will build one big building, the 'District Home School'. All children will attend and a faith-based curriculum will be taught; if it didn't happen before the end 13th Century, it doesn't matter, except for the Republcan Reform of 2007 when we all were required to lead faith-based lives.

9. Opposing political parties. Eh? What?

10. Social programs. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha. By the way, what little Social Security you do receive will be discontinued at the end of the month. After all, FDR was a Communist and we don't want any of that now, do we?

I'm sure there's a million more but I have to go to work. Feel free to add in 'comments' and I'll put 'em up here (with proper credit of course) when I get home.

Update:

For your list, a bumper sticker:I am holier than thou. - dus7

"Since there will be no taxation, all monies from formerly Blue States will be sent directly to formerly Red States so they can maintain their lifestyle since they are so well educated they can't make a decent living. This will also serve as a penitence for the former godless, ungodly, and unrepentant Blue-Staters since we need the money and therefore can't 'purge' them like we'd like to." - Gordon

Prepared at the direction of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Iraq on the Record is a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq. It contains statements that were misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time the statements were made. It does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, it was excluded even if it now appears erroneous. For more information on how the statements were selected, see the full methodology. The Iraq on the Record Report is a comprehensive examination of these statements.

Thanks, Lurch, and thank you, Mr. Waxman.

[Link in left sidebar under the 'cost' counter for reference use. - F-man]

In an article in SCOTUSblog dealing with administration attempts to transfer Jose Padilla to civilian custody so they could charge him with lesser shit than they said he did because they couldn't prove anything after three years, I found the joke of the day:

Responding to the Fourth Circuit's rebuke of the government for supposedly trying to manipulate the courts in the Padilla case, the application said there was "nothing remotely sinister" about what it has done, and said "there is no basis for questioning the good faith of the government" in switching positions to get an indictment of Padilla.

Good technical lawyer stuff if you're interested, with many comments by lawyers if you're in need of inspiration for a nap. Folks get kinda glassy-eyed when we start talkin' about bikes, too, but it's all wonderful stuff!

WASHINGTON - In a program to help businesses after Sept. 11, a high percentage of government-backed loans went to recipients who appeared to be unqualified — some of them unaware they were receiving terrorism-recovery money, investigators report.

The Small Business Administration's inspector general said Wednesday that agency officials were at fault for telling lenders in the program that their determinations would not be questioned.

The inspector general concluded that only nine loan recipients in the 59 cases sampled appeared to be qualified for disaster loans.

...

The AP found that terrorism recovery loans went to a South Dakota radio station, a Virgin Islands perfume shop, a Utah dog boutique and more than 100 Dunkin' Donuts and Subway sandwich shops in various locations.

Meanwhile, small businesses near Ground Zero in New York couldn't get the assistance they desperately sought.

...

Yeah boy, it's good to come from a red state. Who cares if the folks downtown lost their businesses? They probably vote Democrat anyway. Utah, South Dakota, the Virgin Islands, how much you wanna bet the folks who got the bread were Republican contributors too?

n the waning days of 2005, a number of Beltway developments have pointed to 2006 as a pivotal year in the future -- if there is to be any -- of American democracy.

The most far-reaching of these has been the Bush administration's aggressive advocacy of its once-secret program of NSA spying on American citizens. No lawyer outside a small clique of Bush appointees has seriously defended the NSA program, already renewed 30 times by Bush, as legal. Indeed, the only way that it can possibly not be construed as a blatant, ongoing violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (note the key word: Foreign) is if the President has the authority, as Commander-in-Chief, to suspend or override any law. And this is precisely the claim George Bush is making.

But these are symptoms. The disease is the escalating inability of American democracy to follow the Constitution and to respect the rights and honor the participation of ordinary American citizens. The disease is a political process that cannot solve serious problems because it is wholly owned by enormous corporate and political interests, with power concentrated in a relative handful of men (and occasionally women) who owe their power to those interests -- plus, at the top, a lying, murderous president who is claiming the right to break any law.

The only solution is a clean sweep. Congress must reject Samuel Alito, and Congress, if it is (in the words the Bush White House once reserved for the U.N.) "to remain relevant," must impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney. In both cases, citizen outrage will be required to force a corrupt and reluctant Congress to act. And in November, citizens must use the leverage our once-relevant Constitution gives us, and we must sweep the whole rotten Congressional carcass from office -- conclusively enough that no Republican dirty tricks or Diebold-style tampering can alter the results. Regardless of party, we must replace lawmakers, at the local, state, and especially federal level, with candidates who are truly responsive and accountable to the ordinary people who elect them.

It's either that, or by 2007 we will be living in a de facto dictatorship. It's our choice.

Everything else we like to get up on our soapbox about pales in comparison to Bush and his criminal cabal highjacking our Constitution, and the liberty granted to us by it, and turning our country into the Fourth Reich. I am barely able to stop short of calling for armed rebellion.

After September 11th I was deemed the world's most evil man. Thank you for taking my place at the top. Praise be Allah. Praise be Jesus. Both of our dreams are being realized, a world with constant violence, strife, and a clash between our versions of the two major religions. George, as a fellow religious fundamentalist who knows exactly what God thinks and wants, I am somewhat concerned about your image in the world. Because of you, every democracy in Europe and South America has turned dramatically to the left. But with the grace of Allah and Jesus perhaps we can eliminate these liberals

Molly Ivins on the Chimp's criminal abuse of power to spy on Americans.

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Thirty-five years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided some Americans had unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.

The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be killed off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap.

Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response, "Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, do you?"

Folks, we KNOW this program is being and will be misused. We know it from the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- and, boy, if those aren't outposts of al-Qaida, what is? Could this be more pathetic?

This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly. Anyone think we're up to that again? Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?

The answer to the last question is, ultimately: ourselves, for allowing it to be done to us by this gang of Fascists.

Checks, balances, warrants, civil liberties - they're all so 20th century. Historians must now regard the light transitional tenure of Gerald Ford as the petri dish of this darkly transformational presidency.

Consider this: when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it?

I wrote earlier this week about my perceptions when I was in combat and I was thinking about what I would do now, should circumstances evolve to put me in a position to serve again (not outside the realm of possiblility with the recruiting fiasco, my age of 43, and several skills that would be quite useful over there).

I think about what my grandfather did in World War 2 when, at the age of 44, he was called on to fight for his country. They came in the middle of the night, in the Spring of '43, and knocked on the door. There were two men, both of whom he'd known all his life.

"Herman," they said. "Say your goodbyes, you have to come with us."

"I'm 44 years old and fought in the first war," my grandfather replied.

"They need men in Russia. It is not going well," they told him.

"And if I refuse?"

"Do you want to go to jail...or worse?"

And that's the way it went, as he told it to me. That night he said goodbye to his wife and his youngest daughter and left with the men to form up with the other able-bodied men from the town. My mother was already in the German Army, a nurse in a field hospital, and my uncle was serving with the folks who wore black (he enlisted in '39, as soon as war broke out; ended up in a French prison camp for 3 years for his trouble; good for him). Fortunately my grandfather survived.

Think it can't happen here? It makes me wonder what I'd do if orders came requiring me to report for duty. My first reaction is telling them to go fuck themselves. But there are others to consider. Would I disrupt quite a few lives of people I love by leaving the country, putting them through undue hardship? Would I go to prison...or worse and use that to protest the illegality?

Tough questions but I think I, like my grandfather, would go. It has to do not with my unwillingness to go to jail or put loved ones through Hell. It's because there are other guys already there, guys who could use the hand, who could use any help to get through it and get home for good. If I were called back, I don't think I could turn my back on them

You don't think the Chimp is looking out for the proles when he tries to privatize everything in this country, do you? He's doing it to keep (or give more of) the wealth and power with the corporations. Guess what? They're doing it in Iraq. Professor Cole:

...

al-Zaman/ AFP say that the US embassy in Baghdad has advised the incoming government to privatize the hundreds of companies and factories owned by the state (the Baath Party was actually the Baath Socialist Party), selling them to investors. The US administration of Iraq attempted to move toward privatization under Paul Bremer, but the issue was rendered moot by the poor security in the country, which makes investing in it at the moment unattractive.

One of the least attractive aspects of the US government is its fanaticism about privatization. I mean, is this really the time? The good Lord knows how many of those companies or factories are actually operating. And who is going to buy them? Wouldn't it be better at this juncture for the government to use them in a way analogous to FDR public works projects, to put people to work? Al-Zaman estimates that 1/4 of Iraqis live in dire proverty, and the real unemployment rate is still probably 50 percent. Corporations are far less efficient than Washington believes (see: Enron), and some state-owned enterprises have prospered (ask Californians if privatized electricity worked out well for them; and see: Enron). It is no doubt better in the long run to move away from bloated state-owned industries in Iraq, but I just wouldn't have made that a priority.

...

Dr. Cole is being charitable. The reason privatization is a priority is because most of the concerns to be privatized will probably become wholly owned subsidiaries of Halliburton and Bechtel.

Four of your favorite foods: carnitas, pizza, cheeseburgers, chicken-fried steak & eggs. I don't eat these too often because they'd kill me in a heartbeat, you should pardon the play on words, but that wasn't the question!

Four places you'd rather be: to quote an old country song:

There's no place that I'd rather be than right hereWith my red neck 'n white socks 'n Blue Ribbon beer

The only taggin' I'll do involves the White House and some spray paint, so - any volunteers? Yeah, uh-huh, that's what I thought!

Over the past six months, Neil Bush, the son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush and the younger brother of the president, has been shepherded around several former Soviet republics by a man wanted for fraud by Russian authorities, and has showed up in the Philippines and Taiwan at the side of a self-styled messiah.

As an adjunct to hanging the Chimp from a yardarm, we need to castrate all Bush males so they can't spawn any more. This is an evil family.

Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!" However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift. Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited. Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.

But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.

There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law--I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is--and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.

Read this one in self-defense. Print it and keep it next to the shitter. Read it until you have it memorized.

Wow, very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches, yet Bush never sought a court order to conduct the snooping because he thought a court wouldn't let him?! Huh? Let me repeat, the people they spied on "have a history of blowing up trains, weddings and churches." If that's true, then any court in the land would haven given Bush a search warrant.

But there's a larger question. If Bush is now telling the truth about who these people are, then pray tell, what the hell was Bush doing letting hundreds if not thousands of people "who have a history of blowing up trains, wedding and churches" run around free inside the US for the past 4 years?

...

Yeah, whatever happend to 'Homeland Security' and 'fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here'? Have your efforts been so fruitless, are you that worried to force the decision to spy on literally every American? Let's get real, data mining and illegal wiretaps are only being used for one thing; spying on the American people for the political gain of the Republican Party. Any Repub who fails to condemn this policy should be considered an accomplice to it. Like I've been saying, the Republican Party is no longer a political organization, it is a criminal enterprise.

President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.

Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment.

Much as I have a problem with lawyers (too goddamn many of 'em; were I the King, I'd close every law school save Yale and Harvard), there's sort of a love/hate thing going on in my house (the vagaries of insurance law pay a lot of bills in the Fixer household). However, thanks to the Republican Congress, I think one of the only remedies to King George is the courts:

Last week I predicted that defense lawyers would soon start filing motions related to Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance. The New York Times reports lawyers from coast to coast are getting ready to hit the courts, and some will seek to reopen cases in which the defendants have been convicted and are serving their sentences.

...

Some federal prosecutors tell the Times the NSA warrantless surveillance could be a problem for the Government in both past and future cases.

...

While Jeralyn goes on to say some of the probable defendants have lost their access to an appeal thanks to guilty pleas, the demand for discovery might lead to the government dropping charges considered shaky in the first place. She then directs us to one of my favorite legal beagles, ReddHedd:

In a NYTimes article that should come as no surprise to the legal minds in the audience, defense counsel for a number of charged and convicted terrorism suspects are planning to challenge cases based on the latest revelations on the NSA spying domestically. To do less would be malpractice, because many of these defendants were American citizens, so this ought to be no shock to anyone who has spent time as defense counsel in criminal matters.

But as someone who has also been a prosecutor, I can tell you that this scenario is your worst nightmare in those shoes. No matter how solid your case, no matter how dirty the defendent might be, no matter how clean you thought your case was, the US Attorney is going to have to combat the perception by defense counsel that the defendant found his way into the government crosshairs through a dirty wiretap -- which hamstrings the government's case at the start.

...

So all I have to say to defense lawyers is litigate your asses off. It's time to open another front in the Second American Revolution. It's time to send King George back where he came from.

I was reading this post at Main and Central and it got me thinking. Lurch nabbed part of a post from an active duty vet serving in Iraq:

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Some law student emailed me while back with some questions, and after it was all said and done she told me she supported the troops. And I know a lot of people share that sentiment and it's all really warm and fuzzy and whatnot, but honestly, I just rather you run out, sign up and catch the early-bird charter to Kuwait and get your ass over here ASAP so one of us can go home. Maybe we can arrange something, you know, by ones and twos and so on, pretty sure we could get all us over-extended types outta here in no time.

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It got me thinking about my motivations when I was in. Yes, I've seen combat, not the prolonged mess that was Vietnam and is Iraq but the short, intense skirmishes when the military is called upon to act in peacetime. Firefights with drug dealers and processors, coming under fire when inserting and extracting 'covert operatives' from hostile nations (still classified...probably; gotta check on that so I can tell you some stories), and of course the conflict in Grenada. In my case, we got to go home after the job was done. Not all of us, mind you. I lost a 6 mates during my 4 years with AFSOCOM (the old 23rd Air Force), but in general, after the mission, we got to go home to our loved ones until the next mission. And it's the mission that got me thinking. Actually, thinking about what I was thinking at the time.

The reason I volunteered (for SOCOM, not my initial enlistment; I enlisted in the Air Force to keep my ass out of jail) was for adventure and travel to strange exotic lands, and to sleep with strange exotic women. I was 17 and my brain was located somewhere south of my waist, but I digress. It's where I realized I was an adrenaline junkie; nothing beats jumping out of a C-130 from an altitude higher than Mt. Everest in the middle of the night and going more than half the distance before opening your chute. Nothing beats jumping out of a Blackhawk less than 50 ft. over the Gulf of Mexico, swimming miles to some dinky island, and then calling in an airstrike on some drug lord's secret shipping facility, and then blowing up and killing what the Navy pukes didn't get. Nothing beats extracting a 'covert operative' (who gave the signal he was in the clear) in a Communist country and then being opened up on by Soviet infantry just as the chopper flared for a landing. Yes, seriously, that's what I lived for when I was young. That and knowing there would be a woman and a bar waiting for me when I got back.

Did I ever think about the 'Big Picture'? No. Did I ever think, when we went to Grenada, that Reagan was doing it for political reasons, or any other reason than what we were told? No. It was the mission, period. I never paid any notice to the rightness or the wrongness of it. Orders came down, we trained up for the mission, accomplished it, and came home. On to the next. The thought of whether we were 'right' to do what we did never crossed my mind when I was in. The operative word, again, was home. Had I taken part in a protracted conflict, maybe I would have thought more about the morality of what I'd been told to do. I had to deal with the morality later on, and continue to do so.

I think about what these guys have had to do, under the stress of prolonged, repeated deployments [Note: My longest deployment or TDY was 90 days.], and wonder what I would do. Would I open my mouth? Would I complain about the injustice done, once the reason for the mission began to change? Would I have the chance to question right from wrong while dodging bullets?

When I was in, I knew what I was doing was right. There was the Soviet menace and my job to protect democracy from it. Black vs. White. Night vs. Day. Then. It's gotten a bit wide and gray over the years, with hindsight, hence the reason the young boy whose throat I cut when he discovered my hidey hole returns to me so often in my dreams. It wasn't black and white then and it certainly isn't now. There are guys coming back who've had to do far worse in a war, like Vietnam, with little justification from their leaders. You can kill to defend your way of life, as long as you can square it with yourself. When you begin to debate the 'rightness' of what you're doing, as you're doing it, your psyche can't help but suffer. Killing someone who would kill you is one thing. Killing someone who did nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time is something else to reconcile. I have doubts about those who can. It makes me wonder about bomber pilots.

This war is ruining a whole generation of young men and women to enrich people who give not a damn about them. It is illegal and immoral and anyone who supports it is devoid of any 'moral values' they claim to have. I wish I could let them share my dreams...just once.

Shorter WaPo: The US Government is willing to pay just about anyone -- Iraqi news stations, right-thinking bloggers, whatever -- to get out the message that they want you to hear. Your tax dollars at work, in a mass-e-mail campaign or newscast or blogwhore near you.

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Nothing like a well-funded propaganda campaign. Any time the DNC wants to send us money to do what we do, lemmie know. We'll arrange a direct deposit thing. Yeesh.

Mercury has a list of companies who do business with gays and lesbians whom James Dobson wants his Focus on the Fetus wingnuts to boycott. From the looks of the list, they won't be doing business with anyone.

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

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That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

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I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to "protect us."

Yes, the War on Christmas goes on...or at least the War on Christmas Spirit. I can only ask, what would Jesus think?

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The government's home heating supplement now stands at a half or less of what the poor will need if predictions of a harsh winter pan out and fuel bills increase 25 percent. Various studies have established that, in a pinch, the poor scrimp on food purchases in order to meet heating bills. Yet Congress's stinginess is being compounded by the administration's recent decision to reject a request from New York and several other states to increase food stamp outlays to the poor as fuel bills mount.

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Instead of incessantly yelling 'Christmas, Christmas, Christmas', maybe we should remember the spirit of Christ's teachings instead of bandying his name about in false piousness. I'm about sick and tired of folks who demand others say 'Merry Christmas', yet are the same ones who support the war in Iraq and all the crimes associated with it. I don't remember Jesus teaching 'Peace on Earth and goodwill toward white Protestants'. It's about time you people began to live your faith.

Like my grandmother always said, 'actions speak far louder than words'. My Jewish wife is far more 'christian' than most of you who claim to be.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Noor, whose name means light in Arabic, was born with a severe form of spina bifida. Iraqi doctors lack the resources to treat her. They sent her family home, telling them the baby had 45 days at most to live. Barring a miracle, the light in their lives would go out.

Noor beat the odds and will be 3 months old Friday. Her time, though, is running out. No one is sure how long she will live in her condition.

But Noor's family might get the miracle they have dreamed of, thanks to soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team's 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.

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But in the trash-strewn, sewage-infested slums of impoverished Abu Ghraib, few children receive basic medical attention such as vaccinations, much less the kind of intensive care Noor needs.

Morgan took a military doctor to visit Noor, called Baby Nora by the soldiers. The doctor determined that she was born with spina bifida, an open spine. In the early stages of her mother's pregnancy, Noor's spinal cord did not fully close, leaving a gap where a cyst-like growth the size of a baseball now sits on Noor's back.

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Morgan said the Marriott hotel group was willing to donate living space for the girl and an accompanying relative. Delta Air Lines has agreed to fly the child and one relative from Kuwait to Atlanta through its charitable Sky Wish program.

And Childspring International, an Atlanta nonprofit that matches sick children from other countries with doctors in the United States, is working with Children's Healthcare to arrange Noor's medical care.

"We will work as hard as we can to make it happen," said Rose Emily, executive director of Childspring. "I look forward to going to the airport and picking up this little girl."

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A lot of gooddoes happen in Iraq, but we have been a cause of much of the bad. This girl probably would have gotten the medical care she needed in Iraq before we destroyed much of the infrastructure and brought chaos down upon them. Let's hope we hear more good news (not contrived propaganda but real stories of progress). We owe them as much normalcy as possible before we bug out - you know we will, Rummy's already making noises and election season starts in a couple weeks.

Whether you celebrate the birth of the progenitor of the God of your choice, rejoice at the return of the life-giving Sun, dance around an evergreen tree deep in the forest, drink brandy while watching children eschew the fruits of capitalism in favor of playing with the boxes they came in, shine the whole thing on, or do whatever it is the Hebrews do, please express a desire for Peace on Earth and Goodwill amongst Men.

A short prayer, plea, or forlorn longing for a sense of Truth and Justice on the part of the world's powermongers wouldn't be out of line either. Maniacal laughter is optional, but what you do at Grandma's dinner table is none of my business.

Gordon

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"... That's US here at the Brain! Sittin' all alone out in the cold, thanklessly freezin' our beboops off, lookin' for a chance to lob a few at the enemy and praying for a secondary explosion, wonderin' if it's all worth it or if it will make any difference in the scheme of things ..." - Gordon